Greatest Prison
by Mac-alicious
Summary: Living in a Post Zombie world makes it hard for a girl to know who she really is underneath the pale skin, white hair, anger issues and peculiar munchies. / / Liv introspective. OneShot.


**A/N:** This is another new fandom I'm trying to tackle. This short one shot is my way of trying to tap into the characters before I try any more in depth fic. This was written prior to the Season 1 finale, so it only contains my thoughts on Liv up until the finale (which opened up an entirely different can of worms regarding how Liv sees herself and how the people around her see her). Anyway, enjoy! R&R! Thanks! ~Mac

 **Disclaimer:** I don't own iZombie.

 **Greatest Prison**

" _The greatest prison people live in, is the fear of what other people think."_ -David Icke

There was a time in Olivia Moore's life when she had little time for introspection. She was all about facts and structure, because there wasn't room for much else when you were literally holding someone's life in your hands. Which was fine, because she didn't need to bother with questions of who she was or what to do with her life. Pre Lake Washington, pre Blaine scratch, pre zombie undead life, it was so easy to identify herself that she didn't even need to thinkk about it.

She was Olivia Moore, sometimes Liv. She was a med student with a brilliant career ahead of her. She was a daughter. She was a sister. She was Peyton's best friend. She was Major's fiancee. It was easy to know who she was when she had so many things to define her.

Post zombie, not so much.

She was still Olivia Moore, sometimes Liv, but she was no longer a med student. No she was an apathetic employee of the medical examiner's office, slash, alleged psychic consultant. She was a daughter, a sister, on the rare occasion that she could stomach even seeing her family. She was still Peyton's best friend, mostly, more so when she was strung out on cheerleader brain than any other time. She was Major's... _friend_ , when she wasn't running high on lusty artist brain and trying to throw herself at him, when she wasn't convincing him that he was crazy so he wouldn't figure out her secret, and when she wasn't hallucinating an alternate version of him. She was Clive's kind of partner, for as long as she could toe the line between believable psychic and unbelievable psycho who had almost fed him leftover brains too many times. She was Ravi's pet project, friend and confidant. For a single blip in the endless sprawl that is her undead lifetime, she was Lowell's girlfriend, before her own cowardice overrode the inherent bravery of her brain of the week and got him killed. She was a zombie. All other definitions kind of paled in comparison—difficult to imagine, given that she had something of a monopoly on paleness.

The edgy sarcasm, that was new. It was hard to keep in good humor given that she was pretty much dead. She only joked to keep from crying, or to keep from eating people, which was also an issue.

It was hard for her to truly know who she was when she constantly felt like someone else. She consistently had to draw the line between what was really her and what was residual personality acquired form her last brain a la carte lunch. Now that she spent so much time in her own head, and the heads of others, she couldn't help but wrestle with doubts about who she was at her core.

If she wasn't a hyper focused doctor to be, if she wasn't the obsessive planner that had mapped out her entire life at Major's side, if she wasn't the friend, daughter, sister that she used to be, if she wasn't _alive_...then what was she? Who was she?

This had bothered her quite frequently since the boat party, nagged at her because who she once was never should have been out on Lake Washington in the first place. Her first time stepping out of the box she had built for herself had actually killed her, which could have made anyone wary. It was a slight twinge in the back of her mind every time the novelty of a new skill or personality trait wore off. She always shoved it aside in favor of more important things than existential pondering.

It wasn't until Peyton was seeing her in her new true nature that who she had become was vitally important to her.

For that brief moment, Liv saw herself through Peyton's eyes, and the view was not one that could be sugarcoated with sarcasm or a shot of cheerleader brain. She thought her old life had ended on Lake Washington. It hadn't. It ended the second Peyton ran out on her.

Every decision she had made recently was made to give herself a chance to hold on to the last remaining shreds of her former life. She lied, she hid, she pushed people away because as long as they had an image of her former self in their minds when they thought of her, then she could have hope of coming out of this unchanged. If they didn't know the truth, then it didn't have to be true. She said she was protecting them, but she was really protecting herself.

She was protecting herself from having the people she loved look at her the way Peyton had. Because not everyone was going to be as understanding as Ravi or the figment of her imagination Major. She was afraid of how they would see her, what it would make her.

Because if she didn't know who she was, didn't that mean that she was whatever people thought she was? That was what she feared most. She already hated what she had become and how it had destroyed her perfectly planned life. She didn't need the most important people in her life to hate her too.

If she was a monster, she didn't want to know that she was. She didn't want _them_ to know she was.

There was more to her than that. There had to be. It was why she was slowly appeasing her conscience by helping solve as many murders as brains she had eaten, ticking them off like time served in a prison sentence. There had to be more for her beyond this undead life. _There had to be_. Otherwise, why would she keep going on this way?

She was a zombie, but underneath the pale skin, white hair, anger issues and peculiar munchies, she was still Olivia Moore, whatever that entailed.


End file.
